FARMVILLE, Va. – Longwood created more opportunities, but Gardner-Webb simply took advantage of theirs.
In a heavyweight showdown between two top-three teams in the Big South, the Runnin' Bulldogs (8-4-3, 5-1-1) rode a game-winning goal from Maddie Turlington and shut down Longwood's high-powered offense to end the Lancers' four-game win streak with a 1-0 victory Saturday afternoon at the Longwood Athletics Complex.
The loss is Longwood's first since Sept. 26 and snaps a dominant four-game run in which the Lancers had outscored their opponents 13-1 and won four consecutive games by multiple goals.
"First of all, we need to give full and absolute credit to Gardner-Webb," said Longwood head coach
Todd Dyer, whose loss Saturday was his first to Gardner-Webb since Longwood joined the Big South in 2012. "They were very tough to break down defensively, and once they got the goal, they were able to sit in and defend even deeper to make that goal stand."
The second-place Lancers (6-6-3, 4-2-2 Big South) outshot Gardner-Webb 23-8, but Turlington gave the third-place Bulldogs all the scoring they needed with her unassisted strike with just 5:56 remaining before halftime.
That goal came on only Gardner-Webb's fourth shot of the game, coming on a sequence that began with a free kick and ended with Turlington corralling loose ball in the box and firing it through traffic into the lower left post of Longwood's net.
The momentum swung in Gardner-Webb's favor afterwards, as head coach Mike Varga sent midfield and frontline reinforcements to his backfield and clogged the box the rest of the way. The strategy worked, as the Lancers found their shooting lanes clogged and came up empty on their ensuing 14 shots.
"The bottom line is we have to be better in the final third because we'll never win games where we can't score a goal," Dyer said. "And as the game went on, I feel like we became even more disconnected offensively."
Gardner-Webb's defenders blocked seven of Longwood's 23 shots in the game, including three in a row during an eight-second span late in the second half. Leading Lancer goal-scorer
Emilie Kupsov ripped two of those, only to see them both ricochet off the Gardner-Webb defenders packing the box.
Annie Boros followed Kupsov's second rejection with a shot of her own, but that too was turned away before it came within reach of Gardner-Webb goalkeeper Keely Brown.
Kupsov would unload twice more on Gardner-Webb's goal, but her free kick sailed high, and her final shot in the 87th minute was blocked yet again to snap her streak of four consecutive games with a goal.
Brown saved the two of Kupsov's 11 shots that made it on goal, giving Gardner-Webb's senior goalkeeper her second shutout of the season.
"We also need to be sure we're not beating ourselves, and that's exactly what we did by conceding a silly foul in our own end and then making a mess of the free kick that followed," Dyer said. "In the end, that was just a tough day for us, and we'll have to be better moving forward if we expect anything out of these last two games and postseason.
"I know this group will respond, so we'll take these next few days off and then come back ready to give our very best."
The loss sets the stage for two crucial end-of-season matchups for the Lancers, who host seventh-place Winthrop next Saturday, Oct. 20, for Senior Day and then wrap up the regular season at rival High Point the following Tuesday.
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